Combat operations in Iraq are over, if you believe President Barack Obama’s rhetoric. But torture in Iraq’s prisons, first exposed during the Abu Ghraib scandal, is thriving, increasingly distant from any scrutiny or accountability.

Rabiha al Qassab, a British Iraqi woman who lives in London, describes the harrowing story of her husband, Ramze Shihab Ahmed. Having fled in 1998 after being accused of trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Ramze returned to Iraq last year to get his son out of prison. He, too, was arrested and was tortured. Like 30,000 other Iraqis, he and his son are being held without charge. [includes rush transcript]

Amnesty International is condemning Iraq for holding an estimated 30,000 prisoners without trial, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. In a new report, Amnesty documents that Iraqi prisoners are being arbitrarily detained and often beaten to obtain forced confessions. [includes rush transcript]

David Cornwell, the legendary British novelist who writes under the name John le Carré, joins us in London. A former British spy, his books include The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and The Constant Gardener. On the heels of the publication of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Iraq war-defending memoir A Journey, le Carré explains why he refused to interview Blair and why he won’t be reading his...

We speak with Johan Galtung, known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies. He’s spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. Galtung discusses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Mideast talks, why President Obama is losing his base, and much more. [includes rush transcript]

President Obama declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq Tuesday night in the second Oval Office address of his presidency. Although tens of thousands of US troops, special operations forces and private contractors remain in Iraq, Obama announced that Operation Iraqi Freedom is now officially over. We go to Baghdad to speak with independent journalist Nir Rosen. [includes rush transcript]

In his Oval Office address Tuesday night, President Obama said the US had closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis. But many US bases remain in Iraq, as well as the massive US embassy in Baghdad, the size of eighty football fields. We play a report on US bases in Iraq by independent journalist Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films. [includes rush transcript]

While the US invasion and occupation of Iraq over the past seven years has inflicted multiple disasters on the country, many argue that the US assault on Iraq really began twenty years ago with the US-imposed economic sanctions. Joy Gordon, author of Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, writes, "U.S. policymakers effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter."...

The Obama administration says the last combat brigades have left Iraq. Is this the end of the Iraq war or just a rebranding of the US occupation? More than 50,000 troops remain in Iraq as well as 4,500 special operations forces and tens of thousands of private contractors. The US embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world — the size of eighty football fields. We get a perspective on the so-called withdrawal rarely heard in the US...